A Driving Simulator Methodology for Evaluating Enhanced Motorcycle Conspicuity

A methodology was developed for evaluating enhanced powered two wheeler (PTW) conspicuity in a driving simulator environment. In order to evaluate the methodology, a driving simulator experiment was conducted involving n = 10 European car drivers. Testing involved full-task, "blind" experiments in which the driver subjects did not know the true purpose of the experiment, which was to measure differences in behavior due to various PTW frontal lighting treatments. Realistic driving was performed in urban and rural conditions, with drivers performing various realistic primary and secondary driving tasks. Drivers navigated a road circuit that included several real PTW accident sites and scenarios from MAIDS (Motorcycle Accidents In Depth Study) that were accurately modeled in the driving simulator. The lighting treatments included the baseline PTW lighting treatment, which was a single dipped-beam headlamp of a typical sport motorcycle, and three hypothetical lighting treatment examples. The effects of car daytime running lamps were also evaluated, with either 10 or 90% of cars operating with headlights on. The following parameters were measured: detection distance of opposing vehicle (OV), decision as to whether to turn in front of OV, and minimum distance to OV. From these data, the probability of collision with an OV was calculated. Based on this, the potential reduction in the overall number of accidents was estimated based on the subjective relevance of the experimental findings to each of 129 accident configurations in the MAIDS database. In addition, the driving simulator was validated by performing a vehicle detection task in both simulator and full-scale environments. The validation tests indicated similar motorcycle detection rates between the simulator and the full-scale environments. Overall, the simulator methodology was found to provide a powerful tool for researching differences in driver behavior and collision probability due to daytime lighting treatments in this sample of real accident scenarios.